by Jade Alters
“What are you talking about?” I hiss when I step on a particularly sharp rock. “I flirted with you all the time, I thought—Oh!”
The sticks, thorns, and rocks on the ground are tearing up my feet and I stumble, crying out as Ted growls again and forces me to my feet, swinging me around so hard I’m afraid he’s going to dislocate my arm. I can’t help but weep now, tears pouring down my face. How much longer will I have to walk? My feet won’t have any skin left by the time this is over, and I feel like my arm is going to fall off. Everything feels so utterly hopeless, it’s surreal, like some awful nightmare I can’t wake up from.
Ted is spitting mad. I can hardly understand him, he seems so enraged as we trudge on through the woods.
“You didn’t want me,” he insists. “You wanted some handsome lawyer, someone you could bring home to your bitch mother. I heard your phone conversations. You needed a man, is that it? It could have been us, Dora. We could have been happy. I’m a powerful wolf shifter with plenty of money. You would have been lucky to have me. But you only liked me because I looked good on paper, you didn’t care about me at all. You didn’t deserve me, and you weren’t even grateful for my attention. You’re just another ungrateful bitch who doesn’t know what’s right in front of her. That is why I wanted to make you pay. That’s why I’m using you for this spell.”
My mind is spinning, trying to make sense of his rambling rant.
Ted is pissed because I showed interest in him, but it wasn’t genuine enough. So he decided to completely destroy my life.
What a man baby.
All this time I’ve been thinking he’s this scary and important man with his power and his position. But he’s just pathetic and insecure underneath it all. It makes me especially pissed that he’s got me in his clutches now just because he’s physically stronger than me. It makes me so angry that I’m still crying, now out of frustration and rage coupled with the fear.
I hate him. I truly do hate him so much. I hope my bears find him and kill him.
Finally, I see a little yellow light in the woods up ahead. It’s at the top of a little muddy and hazardous hill that I have to climb as Ted yanks me along. There’s a cabin at the top of the hill, and for a second, I’m just dumb enough to think he’s going to take me inside where it’s at least nice and warm and the ground doesn’t mess up my feet.
Instead, he ties me to a tree.
“Just go along with this spell,” Ted says.
At this point, I’m standing straight up against a very uncomfortable tree near the cabin. It’s a huge fir tree, and there’s a knot sticking right into my back that would make me squirm if I could move at all. He’s tied the ropes tight against me, except for my left arm. He’s lifted my left arm and tied a knot around my wrist with the other end tied to a low hanging branch so it looks like I’m raising my arm in a wave. I look weirdly like a marionette. I guess it means that whatever he’s about to do requires the use of my left arm. I shudder to think of what it might be.
Ted is all disheveled now. He’s got this wild look in his eye, and his normally flawless blonde hair is now dry and flying around him.
“I just need you for tonight,” he says again. “And then you’re free. Free to be the ungrateful bitch that you are. Sound good?”
I don’t answer him, and he doesn’t wait for me to reply. Now he’s rolling out a giant cauldron in front of the tree. I’ve never even seen a cauldron that big. I think you have to be a pretty advanced magic user to even attempt the kind of spell that requires a cauldron that big.
Through all of this, I’m still holding out hope that my bears will appear. I have no doubt at all that they’d make quick work of Ted. There wouldn’t even be anything left.
Even as I’m thinking this, I start hearing the growls.
They come from everywhere and I don’t have a nose for shifters, but even I can smell them now.
The wolves are coming.
They seem to come from every direction, trotting in and circling the tree where I’m tied up. I assume they’re all shifters, but they’re all in their wolf forms now; gray, silver, white, black, brown… There are wolves in every color. There must be a dozen of them. Ted remains in human form. He doesn’t even acknowledge them really. But they’re clearly familiar with each other. He walks among them and pours the contents of some big canvas bags into the cauldron. I smell the pungent odor of sulfur and goat’s blood and see him throwing in a whole heap of bones.
“Didn’t I mention?” Ted mutters as he catches his breath near me and wipes his nose. “This spell is to empower the wolves of my clan. It will make us…” He bursts into laughter, seemingly so pleased with himself he can hardly stand it. “Oh, Dora. It will make us so powerful. Powerful enough to defeat the bears who have held this territory for far too long—to defeat any shifter who would stand between my clan and domination.”
The wolves seem to like his little speech because they all start howling until Ted quiets them down again.
“I’ll brew the spell at first light,” Ted says. He whips a switchblade out of his pocket and flips out the blade, waving it in front of me, and I can’t help but tremble.
He said he would free me once this spell was done.
But freedom can mean a lot of things.
“Shoot, I also forgot to tell you that we’re going to need quite a lot of your blood for this spell to work.” He leers at me, licking his teeth. I shut my eyes, wanting to make him disappear.
“You said you’d let me go free,” I say through gritted teeth. I don’t want to cry and give him that satisfaction, but I can’t help myself now.
“Death is freedom,” Ted says. He smiles casually then. It’s the same smile he used to throw around the office every time he won a case. It’s the same smile that means he just got the upper hand over somebody and fooled him.
That’s all I am to him. I’m another win. I’m somebody who’s screwed him over in his eyes so now he’s getting payback.
Ted grabs the arm that’s hanging from the branch over my head. I try to fight him as much as I can, flailing my arm as much as I can while it’s hanging by that rope and Ted snarls, grabbing at me. Finally, I scream when I feel sharp teeth clamping onto my leg. A wolf has my right leg in his jaws. When I looked down, I see its fierce eyes, and it growls, sinking its teeth in a little more until I throw my head back and scream again.
“Shut up.” Ted backhands me and that’s when I give up. I go limp and let my arm just hang.
I have no power and there’s no way I can fight. All I can do is hope the bears find me before I die.
Ted grabs my arm, and I watch in horror as he slices the inside of my forearm. I don’t even feel the pain at first. I might be in shock as I watch my arm open up, blood flowing freely. Ted wipes his bloody switchblade on his jeans, pockets it, and picks up a big glass vial from the ground. He holds it to my limp and bleeding arm, and it fills quickly. The pain hits me, and I clench my teeth, my jaw uncomfortably locking and tears making my vision blur. Everything seems to hurt. Everything is pain and everything feels hopeless as I watch too much blood flow out of my arm and spill to the ground when Ted takes the vial away.
I already feel weak, and I shudder from the cold, gagging because I feel nauseated suddenly. The sky is turning orange, I note dimly. The sun is rising.
I’m going to die soon.
I shut my eyes and think of my beautiful bears.
Nathan
When I was a boy and my father (also the alpha of his sleuth) was teaching me how to be a good alpha, he told me that nothing mattered more than protecting your mate and your sleuth. Your sleuth mates are like your brothers, yet he impressed upon me that “brother” is also not the right word.
“It’s not too different from what your mate will be to you,” my father said. “They are all your great loves. You must protect them and be loyal to them at all costs. They will not betray you if you show them the love that you hold deep in your heart.”
As an alpha, I can be a little stoic. Grant and Jesse like to tease me about it. But the love I have for them and Brett, it’s not too different from how I love Dora.
God, I do love Dora. It might be fast, but then that’s always how it goes with mates in the shifter world. I know now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, as the four of us run through the labyrinth of the Coleridge woods, that I love Dora. We all love her. She’s our shared fated mate. We’ll die for her if we have to. But I know too well that if I lose any of them, it will cut me deep. Bears feel things more deeply than other shifters. Bears who lose their mates can lose their minds from the grief. It’s been known to happen. The only reason I’m not howling over George’s body right now is because Dora still comes first. But I feel his loss keenly, and none of us are going to be over it any time soon, even though he’s not one of our sleuth.
We’re just rounding a bend towards a steep and muddy incline, just praying we’re actually going in the right direction, when the four of us feel of it. Our six friends are spread out around us, following our lead, but they stop in their tracks when they see the four of us stumble.
At first, I think it’s only me. There’s a sudden sharp, stabbing pain in my left front leg. I roar and find the world turning upside down as I stumble and my momentum makes me topple over. I’m dimly aware of Brett, Grant, and Jesse doing the same. I can even feel their pain colliding with mine in my mind. All four of us have stabbing pains in our left front leg, and it’s so intense, we have trouble staggering back to our feet.
But then we smell the blood.
It’s so strong, I can taste it. It’s Dora’s blood. I know it as sure as I know my own name. Dora is close, and she’s bleeding, and we can smell her blood flowing out of her.
Dora is going to die.
The thought fills me with the kind of rage that comes before the depression of grief. Smelling her blood, it almost makes me feel as if she’s dead already. Which is not a helpful way to feel, but it does seem to drive all of us forward. We all simultaneously change our direction, veering to the left and in the direction of that strong scent of Dora’s blood. She smells so alive even as I feel her death in my bones. I sense the faintest thread of her presence then as we get closer.
It’s then that I hear the howling of wolves.
Brett roars beside me, and we climb a hillside toward a yellow light glowing from a small cabin at the top. We all look at each other and slow our running. I look out at our six friends who have come to help us and will them to follow our lead. The wolves don’t seem to have sensed us yet. They’re farther up ahead and surrounded by trees and boulders. Each of us finds a place to hide, trying to be as quiet as possible. Honestly, the wolves must be too caught up in some intense magic or something to immediately sense us coming. We seem to have the upper hand for the moment.
We manage to spread out around the clearing in front of the cabin, forming a circle around them. There are only ten of us, and there seem to be a couple dozen wolves. This is going to be a brutal fight. We’re larger and we can be faster than we seem. We definitely have the advantage of brute force. If I fall on a wolf the right away, I can kill him just by crushing him. We tend to be underestimated as fighters. But wolves are fast and furious fighters.
This is going to be rough.
Yet, as I crouch behind a boulder and see Dora right in front of us, tied to a tree, her arm gushing blood and Ted standing before a huge cauldron and surrounded by wolves, I lose all sense of coherent thought for a minute. I can’t tell if Dora is passed out or dead, but she’s deathly white.
I look to the left of me and see Brett hiding behind a big pine, and he looks to me expectantly. I give him a nod, and he turns his head to nod at the next bear over. The signal travels around the circle. Now, I come around from the boulder just as the wolves’ ears perk up, and they start snarling and looking around, crouched and ready to pounce. Clearly, they sense us now, but there’s enough growth around the cabin that we’re still a little hidden.
Ted is chanting something. He’s standing before the cauldron and holding the vial as he recites something in Latin.
I have no idea what he’s saying. I’ve never been great with languages. It doesn’t really matter. Whatever it is, it’s bad. Dora looks dead, and I see red in front of my eyes. It’s as if my blood is turning to fire.
The wolves are trying to warn us to back off, but I don’t give a fuck. This ends now, one way or the other.
Dora
I feel sick and weak. I feel as if life is slowly seeping out of me, and it hasn’t got much farther to go. Yet, I’m not so out of it as to have no sense of my bears.
They’re here.
They’ve come for me.
The wolves are on alert and ready to fight. I think they’re trying to scare off the bears, but I know that’s not happening any time soon. My arm is a scary shade of white, that awful dark line down the middle still oozing blood. I can hardly keep my eyes open. But even so, I can feel them. I find my lips curving up slightly into a smile. It’s so comforting to feel them so near. I can even smell them. I think I’ve gained the ability to smell shifters, or at least I pick them out easily enough. To smell them so near is like coming home. They’re strong and warm-blooded and alive. They’re angry, and I can feel it. The bond between us is stronger than ever. Why I ever doubted what it was or questioned it, I don’t know. It’s like a live, vibrating wire, and it pulses with love and strength.
A tear slides down my cheek, but not out of sadness or anger. I’m just so moved by the love we share that I feel a little strength returning to me. Or rather, I feel strengthened by them being so near. Whatever it is, it has me rallying, and my eyes flutter open. I swallow and try to concentrate very hard. Ted is in front of me, chanting in Latin, and I can feel the magical energy coming out of that cauldron.
I have to do something. I can’t give in anymore. I have to be strong for my bears and fight for them just like they’re fighting for me. I think back to the spell that I studied with Grant. There was a spell for protection I found, though it was only meant for shared fated mates.
But that’s what I am. That’s what we are. If I have faith in our love and in my own strength, I’ll be able to cast it. I just have to gather myself and focus now.
“Fates of love,” I whisper, shutting my eyes. “Hear me now. Bring my mates protection from their enemies. Cover them. Cover them in your veil. Let goodness and justice be their guide. Oh, fates of love...” I go on, racking my brain to remember every word, and the spell keeps coming to me as if a teleprompter is rolling in my head. When I open my eyes again as I’m speaking, I see my own blood begin to glow from the ground. As if there’s an amber light shining through it. My heart pounds with fear, not knowing if it’s good or bad. I don’t remember exactly what the spell is supposed to do, only that’s it for protection in times of great turmoil. But I keep reciting, watching my blood glow brighter all over the ground where it’s been spilled.
Just as the last of my strength leaves me and I begin to pass out, I hear the bears begin to charge.
Nathan
I charge forward, and the others follow me. It’s all out warfare as the ten of us bears attack the wolves. I see Jesse up on his hind legs just as two wolves jump at him, but the force and weight of him throws them back. He tackles them into the mud, dispatching them quickly with claws that are thick and sharp enough to tear a man in two from head to toe. My strategy at the beginning of a battle is to intimidate with roars and swipe out with my formidable claws at anyone who comes near me. It’s a simple ploy, but it works exceedingly well to take out the weaker fighters. Wolves might be good warriors, but they always tend to forget about bear claws. Wolves might be fast too, but bear claws can kill you with one well-placed swipe. I take out three wolves inside a minute, and I see others running from me but heading straight into the jaws of other bears.
The battle is long. I see a few wolves just up and flee, giving up on the fight. That’s fine with me. W
e might find them later anyway just by their scent. I don’t think I’ll forget a single scent I smell tonight. But the sooner this fight ends and we can see to Dora, the better.
In all the chaos, as the other nine keep up the battle, I’ve lost track of Ted, but now I see him trying to climb on top of the cauldron, his face bright red as he continues to chant. I make a run for it to get at him, and three wolves latch on to me. For a fleeting second, I think this is it. I’m about to die. But if Dora is dead, maybe that’s okay. Yet, my heart feels torn thinking of the grieving sleuth mates I’d be leaving behind. I know they’d never truly get over my death, and that alone is enough to rend my heart in two.
I feel teeth trying to tear into my thick hide. If nothing else, that will give them some trouble. Once you sink your teeth into a wolf, you can tear them up pretty easily, assuming they don’t get away. Us bears have much thicker hides. You can’t take a bite out of us so easily.
Pain makes me roar, and I’m forced to the ground under the weight of the wolves. They’re larger than regular wolves, and I can’t raise myself up under their weight. I can’t move. They’ve got me, and I shut my eyes, hating this sense of helplessness that’s brought me to my knees as fangs sink in, and I feel tissue beginning to tear in my flank.
I manage to turn my head to the side facing the cauldron, and I see a great amber glow coming from the ground and from Dora’s bleeding arm. Has it been glowing this whole time? Only then do I sense a magic veil of protection all around me. I might just live. Dora must have cast it. I don’t know how she could have done it with so much blood loss, but she cast it to save us and the thought of it makes my heart swell in my chest. I keep that thought in my head; the thought of the love between us, even as I feel death coming for me.
Suddenly I feel the weight on top of me lighten. I smell Grant and Jesse nearby. They’re on the wolves, ripping them away. They’ve taken them by surprise, and I’m able to get to my feet. I whip around and clobber one of the wolves, tearing through his flank with my huge claws before he even knows what’s happening. He goes down like a ton of bricks, and I toss him aside. When I turn back, I see Grant and Jesse have already taken down the others.
